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A thought I’m nearly positive of when my mother continues on with, “His arrest made the news, and with it, it was discovered that he has a lot of gambling debt and is in great financial trouble. His future at Monroe is now in jeopardy over all of this.”
“Good thing I didn’t marry him,” I quip, unable to hold back my grin. Lenox told me he’d punish him greatly, and it seems he has. And while part of me does feel bad, I have no doubt Alfie’s attorneys will get all the charges dropped.
“Good thing you didn’t marry him,” she parrots only her tone isn’t as light as mine. “But the press will start with you again since you’re his ex-fiancée, so even though I hate you being there with that man, I’m also relieved you’re there since it’s keeping you safe and protected.” She sighs. “It’s a mess. All of this is a mess.”
“Mom, it really isn’t. The shares are in my name, the company is staying with our family, and I didn’t have to marry Ezra to make that happen.” And hopefully, that means Alfie will back off once and for all. At the very least, his winning pitch to somehow get me to marry his son is over. There’s nothing else either can do. They lost. Speaking of. “Mom, I need Dad’s laptop. Do you have it?”
She hesitates. “Yes. Why do you need it?”
“I’d like to go over some of his business stuff,” I partially lie. I mean, I would, but that’s far from the main reason I need it.
“Oh.” A sigh. “Yes, I’ll send it to you. It should go to you anyway, and no one else.”
I squint at the way she says that. “What does that mean?”
“Alfie has been asking me for it. I told him I threw it out. That if he needed to find it, he should search the LA dump. He wasn’t happy about that.”
“Why did you tell him that if you still have it?”
“Because I don’t want Alfie to have anything that was your father’s personal property. His work laptop went down with him on the plane. This is his personal laptop, and Alfie isn’t family.”
Hmm. There is a lot to explore with that, considering how adamant she was that I marry Ezra and play ball with Alfie.
“No,” I say resolutely. “They’re not family. And now they never will be. Mom, did you know Dad changed his will shortly before I was supposed to get married? He made it so that it all went to me and added the stipulation that I had to be married. Can you think of any reason why he’d do that?”
She’s silent for a few minutes, so long in fact that I lift my phone from the log and check the screen to be sure she’s still there. “I don’t know. As far as I knew, everything was going to me, as that’s how we had set it up when you were born.” She’s silent again and then clears her throat. “Two months before he died, he did that?”
I feel awful telling her this, but I have to know if she knows something I don’t. “Yes.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he…” She trails off and stops that thought before redirecting. “Your father was just very serious about you marrying Ezra.”
“I know, but why? Why was that more important than my happiness? He knew I didn’t want to marry him.”
She releases a breath. “I don’t know. He didn’t talk to me about it, but when you threatened to leave Ezra two months before the wedding, I know your father was under a great deal of stress about it.”
Two months before the wedding. That’s when I told my parents I was leaving him, and that’s when my father told me I had to stay and stick it out. That’s also around the time he changed the will.
“Whatever his reasons were,” she continues, cutting off my thoughts, “a Monroe cannot marry a man who is arrested for drugs.”
“No. Talk about bad PR.” I’m smiling. So big and bright and stupidly goofy.
That is, until my mother says, “But you didn’t marry Lenox to make yourself happy.” And my smile slips. “You married him so you wouldn’t have to marry Ezra. Now that that’s all done and taken care of, you need to plan your exit strategy from him.”
“My attorney recommended a year of marriage to not only make it look real for stockholders’ confidence but to anyone—like Alfie and Ezra—who might try and challenge it.”
“And because of that, I worry about the impact the man you married will have on your heart. A year is a long time to spend with someone who hurt you once. I know he’s helping you, but just remember, what feels like acts of love in the moment can backfire on us in the next.”
I freeze as something in her voice and the way she says that hits me—and hits me hard. Did my father do something to her? Were they not as happy as I always imagined them to be? Is that why he changed his will?
“Just safeguard yourself, okay?”
I’ll try, are the words that immediately hit my head. Instead, I don’t manage to say anything at all, and after a bit more back and forth, I say goodbye to my mom and ask Alice to lead me back home. Home. Is that what this is, and for how long now that Ezra has been neutralized? Could I start thinking about moving out of here to Boston or back to LA? Is that even what I want?
Alice and I weave our way along the lake just as snow starts to fall. It’s beautiful. The way it dusts the exposed ground and sticks to the trees, the way it floats into the lake and gets lost in its icy waters. Eventually, we end up back at the house, but when I enter, shucking out of my winter gear and dropping my boots back by the back door, I find I’m not alone. Lenox is sitting at the piano all the way in the front of the house, his back to me, playing an intricate and haunting melody I’ve never heard before.
I didn’t expect him for at least another two hours.
The entire walk back to the house, my mind swam with everything my mother said. Especially about what feels like acts of love, might not actually be. But in that thinking, I realized I can’t be a child and avoid Lenox forever. My plan was to make dinner for him and see if I could be around him without jumping him or falling for him. He hasn’t slept in my bed again since Sunday night, but he continues with the roses. Sometimes I hear him come in and pretend to be asleep. Sometimes I never hear him but wake to find a new, fresh one.
